Visible Voicemail Turns all Voicemails into iPhone Voicemails

The bane of my cell phone experience before I had my iPhone was checking my voicemail. I couldn’t fast forward through messages, and they were up for review to be resaved about twice a month. It. Sucked. So, naturally the iPhone’s handy scrollable voicemail feature was a happy change.

The Visible Voicemail app by YomiTech strives to make that same convenience possible with voicemails you receive on other voicemail services. After you complete a quick sign up process, the app will assign you a unique email address ending in @visiblevm.com. From there, it is up to you to contact your voicemail provider and figure out the process required to forward voicemails as an attachment to this email.

There are quite a few providers that offer a voicemail to email service, and, to YomiTech’s credit, there are complete instructions for at least three major providers (Google Voice, Vonage, and Magic Jack) on their website’s question forum. I would advise that you check with your provider to verify that they have a free voicemail to email service, as even some major carriers do not.

Because Apple does not allow apps to run in the background, you will not be notified of new messages in real time like with iPhone voicemails, but there is a push notification function. Depending on your phone’s settings, you can be notified at least every 15 minutes.

Once you open the app, old voicemails are visible while the new ones download. Again, this is a slower process than with your AT&T iPhone voicemails, but with the time you would normally spend fast forwarding, etc. through traditional voicemail, my guess is that the time consumed is probably a wash. The voicemail screen looks the same as the iPhone’s, so users should be able to navigate it with ease.

If you do encounter problems, Visible Voicemail allows you to check a FAQ’s section and email the app’s support team from within the application.

Despite the slight wait time to receive messages, and assuming no communication issues between your provider and Visible Voicemail, this app has the potential to add the same luxuries we love about our iPhone voicemail to the rest of our messages.

Visible Voicemail is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch and requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.